


No Keeper of the Key

by deadendtracks (amonitrate)



Series: the possibility was a blade [6]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, Gen, Missing Scene, Season/Series 05, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 13:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20815589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/deadendtracks
Summary: “It’s Tommy’s,” she said, and it was, it was Tommy’s alright, it was Tommy’s cap. Muddy where one of them had trampled it on their way out into the field.Spoilers for series 5, hence the vague summary.





	No Keeper of the Key

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Peaky Blinders Emergency Response Challenge, episode 6.
> 
> Definite spoilers for the new series, through episode 6.
> 
> I do not consent to have my work hosted on or accessed by any third party app or site. If you are seeing this fanfiction anywhere but archiveofourown it has been reposted or accessed without my permission. Please be aware that I am strongly against this type of app and ask that you access my fic via AO3 in the future.

Something wasn’t right. 

Tommy did his thinking on his own, Arthur knew that. He’d been that way since France; maybe he’d been that way when they was kids, but Arthur had a hard time remembering Tommy as a kid these days. Could still picture Ada in braids and John with his ears that stuck out and missing front tooth and hell, Finn had been a kid just last week, hadn’t he? But whenever he tried for Tommy it felt like he’d always been the way he was now, the way he was usually. Arthur was sure he used to smile, big stupid shiteating grin, but he couldn’t picture it no more, Tommy smiling. It’d been like that for awhile, it weren’t nothing new.

Back in that dressing room after the riot had come and left Mosley still breathing, that’d been new, new in a way that had made Arthur’s guts go to water. Tommy pacing and shouting like he was ready to burst out of his skin, Tommy curled over himself with a tremor in him as if the slightest touch might set him off like a mine. Barney was dead, Aberama was dead, someone had betrayed them all, and Tommy’d lost the plot. Arthur’s watery guts had shot into his throat, watching his brother’s lips move without sound, and finally he’d had to force him up and out of the theater before the coppers found them, had to put him in his car and start driving, headed out of the city towards Warwickshire because he didn’t know nowhere else to go. 

He’d calmed down in the car, Tommy had. Stopped his shaking at least. Didn’t ask where they was headed, didn’t ask nothing, just sat there and let Arthur drive. Finally lit up after a good half hour, and it had loosened Arthur’s own shoulders a little to see, Tommy’s hands steady as he popped open his silver case and picked out a cigarette, flicked his lighter. Breathed in the smoke, breathed it out. Arthur’d fumbled in his coat pocket and held a flask out to him but Tommy’d shaken his head, so Arthur took a quick swig himself and put it away again.

At the house Tommy’d got out of the car and then just stopped, right there in his drive, just stood there, and that’s when the sinking feeling had crept back, mud rising up to his waist and climbing higher, because Tommy hadn’t said nothing since that dressing room back in Birmingham. He wasn’t shouting no more, wasn’t shaking neither, but he was still… Arthur didn’t know. Just knew he should get him into the house, yeah, gut screaming to get him inside, but Tommy’d taken off. Walked away on his own, like he always did. And Arthur’d let him go.

“Arthur?”

He turned round to find Lizzie in the doorway to Arrow House, arms folded against the chill. 

“What’s going on? I heard the car, then--”

There was a crack. Not loud, not close, but no mistaking it for something else, not for a man like him. The sound bounced off the stone walls, muffled by distance and the fog, but it had come from behind him, from--

“Fuck,” Arthur said, pulling his own gun. Jesus fuck, what if this had been a trap all along, whoever had betrayed them lying in wait--

“Where’s Tommy?” 

“Stay here,” Arthur barked, and set off running.

Lizzie didn’t listen. He could hear her behind him, hear her shoes on the gravel of the drive, but he didn’t wait or take the time to make her turn back. The gunshot had come from somewheres off the main road, so he veered away into the plowed furrows where the mist was thick and it closed around him like a choking shroud, that mist, and then he couldn’t hear nothing but his own breathing, didn’t know if Lizzie was still behind him, didn’t know if anybody was ahead of him. Could be a whole battalion waiting in this field to ambush them and he wouldn’t be able to tell. He wanted to shout for Tommy but stopped his mouth on the worry they weren’t alone. Strained to hear another shot, to hear anything, but nothing came. Nothing at all.

Finally something solid appeared in front of him, grey and fuzzy around the edges from the fog, so Arthur came up short and aimed his gun and waited. Thought maybe he recognized the shape of Tommy’s shoulders in his long coat, but couldn’t be sure, could he. He stood there, trying to reign in his own pants for air so he wouldn’t be heard if he’d got the jump on ‘em, if it weren’t Tommy after all, but nothing happened and the fuzzy shape in front of him got fuzzier and seemed to drift a little, then the fog swirled around them and it disappeared again like it hadn’t been there at all. 

“What is it, what--” 

He whirled, finger curling around the trigger. “Fuck, I nearly took your head off,” he hissed as Lizzie materialized at his side.

“Did you see him? I thought I saw something.” Her voice came in that strange flat way sound had in heavy fog, like you was stuck in the middle of a wad of cotton. In Flanders when it had got like this you wouldn’t hear the shells coming, wouldn’t hear nothing until it blew you to fucking bits where you stood.

“Maybe,” he said. 

But nothing was there, now. Nothing at all.

They tried to search the field, finally calling Tommy’s name after they didn’t find nothing and nobody took a crack at them, but all they got out of it was mud up to their shins and a damp that soaked into everything they wore. Arthur shouted until he went hoarse but the fog was thick as mustard gas and in the end Lizzie pointed out their own tracks in front of them and they realized they’d gone in circles. Lizzie’d started shivering in her thin dress, her hair stuck to her forehead and droplets on her eyelashes, so Arthur’d made her put on his coat and they’d tramped back, following their own footsteps so they wouldn’t get lost again.

“Arthur, fuck, wait--” Lizzie broke off, bending down. 

“What is it, eh?”

She held whatever it was out and he took it in his hands and turned it over and something in him crumpled up and stayed that way.

“It’s Tommy’s,” she said, and it was, it was Tommy’s alright, it was Tommy’s cap. Muddy where one of them had trampled it on their way out into the field.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, Tom.”

“C’mon.” Lizzie’s face was set and he couldn’t read her no more so he followed her back to the house.

Tommy’s housekeeper met them at the door, her face all done up in worried lines. “There’s been calls,” she said, eyeing their wrecked shoes as they trailed mud into the hall. “For Mr. Shelby.”

“I’m sure there have,” Lizzie said, shrugging off Arthur’s coat, which the housekeeper took from her. “Thank you, Frances.”

“I’ve left a list on his desk,” the woman went on, her attention swinging between Lizzie and him, “Is Mr. Shelby out at the stables? His car is--”

“He ain’t here,” Arthur burst. Fuck. 

Lizzie shot him a glare she must have picked up from Tommy and shut him right up. “Who’s called, Frances?”

“Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Thorne, Inspector Moss, someone from Westminster and a gentleman who wouldn’t leave his name but claimed Mr. Shelby had stolen his dog.”

It was bloody ridiculous after everything else, that last bit, and a high mad laugh escaped Arthur. “His dog? Some fucker thinks Tommy stole his fucking dog?”

Lizzie looked as lost as Arthur, but her mouth pressed in a thin line before she spoke again. “I don’t think that’s the most important matter at hand.”

Tommy’d never said where he’d got the bloody dog, or why. It had just showed up, this massive bear of a thing that followed him around like a duckling. They’d never had a dog growing up, not when there was already too many mouths to feed and shit enough to go around. Arthur’d found a feral kitten once and brought it home, and--

“Mrs. Gray and Mrs. Thorne were quite urgent that Mr. Shelby return their calls,” Frances said, insistent-like, the way maids got when they thought you weren't doing right by the house you lived in. Maids were like the teachers he'd had back at school that way, always trying to make sure you knew nothing you did was proper enough.

“Thank you, Frances, that’s all,” Lizzie said, with the kind of finality he could tell still took effort. He and Linda hadn’t had maids; Linda had thought it decadent, and he’d never got the hang of how to talk to them.

Frances looked like she might argue, but she held her tongue.

“Sorry ‘bout the mess,” Arthur said as she turned to leave.

  
  
Lizzie dragged the whole story out of him, or the ragged bones of it anyhow, pinning him in a chair in Tommy’s office, standing over him with her hands on her hips and keeping the whiskey from him until he spilled.

“Jesus Christ,” she said after he’d run out of words. “And you all just fucking_ went along _with this plan?”

Arthur wasn’t sure what part of it she was asking him to answer for, so he just shrugged.

“We had a family meeting,” he said. “Or started to, anyway, until Michael--”

“A family meeting,” she turned away with a laugh. “How’d he explain my absence, then? Or did none of you notice?”

“Uh.” Arthur scrubbed at his face, suddenly dog tired. “He said you was at something of Charlie’s. The violin. Something about the violin.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Lizzie repeated. “So you all voted, did you?”

“He didn’t talk to you?” 

“No he didn’t fucking talk to me. He hasn’t been home in days,” Lizzie said. “If he’d told me any of this I would have fucking--” she broke off, shaking her head.

Tommy didn’t tell nobody nothing when he knew they might make a fuss about it. That had started in France, Arthur was sure of that much. Tommy’d stopped telling them when he knew their orders ahead of time, said even when they kept their mouths shut the other men picked up on it anyhow and it was bad for morale. Caused problems.

“It was a good plan,” Arthur said. “Would have worked, ‘cept for the fucking black cat. Fuck. I shoulda listened to him, black cat dreams are never--”

“Arthur,” Lizzie said, “he tried to assassinate a member of parliament in front of thousands of people, in what stretch of the imagination was that a good plan? What was he going to do afterwards, for fuck’s sake?”

“I dunno,” Arthur said. He stood up out of the chair and Lizzie stepped back and didn’t try to stop him from pouring himself a drink this time, fingering the bottle of snow in his pocket. “I dunno what he was gonna do. You know Tommy.” 

“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “I know Tommy. And everything went to shit, and now--”

When Arthur turned, glass in hand, her face was white and drawn and grim.

“He won’t…” Arthur took a swig of whiskey. “He won’t do nothing. Just needs to walk it off, get it out of his system. You know how he is.” She looked away. “Lizzie, he’ll turn up, yeah? He’ll turn up, you’ll see, he always does.”

She covered her face with her hands and then dropped them. He’d been afraid she’d started weeping maybe, but her eyes were dry and hard. 

“We didn’t find him out there, Lizzie, so--”

“We walked in circles in the bloody fog,” Lizzie said. “If there was anything to find, we could have passed right by and never known.”

Arthur didn’t have nothing to say to that.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Horses" by Patti Smith.
> 
> Possibly there will be more to this, but for now it's a vignette so I can make the deadline.


End file.
